Epigraphic geography: the tribute quota fragments assigned to 421/0-415/4 B.C

Hesperia, Fall, 2004 by Lisa Kallet

ABSTRACT

In this article, the author examines fragments of the Athenian tribute quota lists assigned to 421/0-415/4 B.C., the period preceding the elimination of tribute in ca. 413. The epigraphical and historical arguments employed previously in the reconstruction of these lists are on the whole not cogent. Moreover, in some cases, epigraphic anomalies such as differences in lettering and the uncertainty of joins may challenge the association of fragments within lists. It is suggested that many fragments could equally well be dated to the period following the increased assessment of 425, a period that currently constitutes the sole gap in the reconstructed tribute record.

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The first decade of the Peloponnesian War (431-421 B.C.), the so-called Archidamian War, took its toll on the Athenian treasury. (1) In the years following the Peace of Nikias, concluded in winter 422/1, however, Athens evidently recovered its financial strength--so Thucydides has Nikias claim in a speech before the assembly during a debate about the proposed Sicilian expedition. (2) Yet, by 413, the rosy picture had darkened. In or around that year, increased expenditures and declining revenues drove the Athenians to dismantle their tributary system of obtaining imperial revenue, in place for ca. 65 years, and to substitute in its stead a five-percent maritime tax, an eikoste, in hopes of extracting more revenue from the arche (Thuc. 7.28.4). Whether this radical change came about swiftly or as a result of some years of debate and planning cannot be known. (3) The decision and the fiscal environment that prompted it, however, immediately elevate the importance of the preceding years in the larger history of tribute.

EVIDENCE FOR TRIBUTE ASSESSMENT AND COLLECTION OTHER THAN QUOTA LISTS

Evidence for tribute assessment and collection during this period is both literary and epigraphical. Among the literary sources, Andokides (3.8-9) states that the Athenians collected over 1,200 talents of tribute annually during the period of the Peace, a figure that Plutarch (Arist. 24.3) increases to 1,300 talents. (4) [Andokides] (4.11) attributes to Alkibiades a twofold increase in tribute in 418/7. Scholars have tended to be skeptical of claims like these, given the exaggeration and blatant inaccuracy that color fourth-century oratory--especially when orators enlist fifth-century Athenian history for their rhetorical agenda--and given the problems that the late source Plutarch poses for specific details of fifth-century history. In any case, such sources, without a check, fail to bring us closer to understanding why the Athenians would choose to abolish tribute in ca. 413; on the contrary, they make the decision more difficult to understand. These problems in general bring epigraphic evidence to center stage.

Besides the tribute quota lists, recording the dedication of 1/60th of the tribute of the cities to Athena, the editors of ATL, Meritt, Wade-Gery, and McGregor, placed great weight both on the assessment of tribute in 422/1 (IG [I.sup.3] 77) (5) and on inferences drawn from the terms of the Peace of Nikias as outlined by Thucydides (see below) to test the validity of the claims made by literary sources. According to the editors' historical reconstruction, (6) the assessment of 422/1 reduced, "wherever feasible," the amounts of tribute imposed on cities to their levels at the outset of the Delian League in 478/7 (or commensurate with those levels in the cases of cities that had not been original members of the League), the so-called tribute of Aristeides. (7) In the years following the assessment of 422/1 the Athenians collected ca. 500 talents of tribute each year, until 414/3, when tribute was abolished. By that year, presumably because of the modest intake combined with unusual expenditures, most notably on the Sicilian expedition, the treasury had dropped to its 422 level. According to this reconstruction, the quota lists and the assessment of 422/1 were mutually corroborating, and both in turn provided a crucial corrective to an inaccurate literary tradition; the income from tribute never reached 1,200 or more talents during this period, and no increase in assessment occurred in 418/7. (8)

The view that the assessment of 422/1 represented a dramatic reduction consequently guided the editors of ATL in their assignment of fragments of quota lists to the years following 421. It is important, however, to understand on what this view depends. It owes perhaps most to an inference drawn from Thucydides, who records as one stipulation of the Peace of Nikias that six cities in the north that had revolted from Athens were to be required to pay "the tribute of Aristeides" (5.18.5). Following West, Meritt and his coeditors argued that, if cities disloyal to Athens were to pay at this level, "loyal friends" could not have been expected to pay a higher amount. (9) Yet, in accordance with the strictures embodied in the 425 assessment, the Athenians would have completed the assessment the previous summer. (10) Thus, a new stage was envisioned, in which the assessment, while "introduced" at its proper time, was then withheld until the Peace so that it could take account of the new peacetime situation. (11)